Lakers have no answers for OKC

(News4usonline) – This is not about the officials and them blowing their whistles. The NBA second round playoff series between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Oklahoma City Thunder comes down to which team are making the most plays. 

“I think it’s, typically, if you can poke holes at a team in a playoff series, there’s a good chance they might have a temporary solution or can sort of adjust maybe a little bit,” Lakers head coach JJ Redick said shortly after Game 3. “This team, in-game, because of their personnel can just adjust like that.” 

So far, it’s been the Thunder making the plays. The Lakers have not. 

No amount of bellyaching about how the officials are treating you is going to solve the Lakers’ dilemma, and that’s finding a way to stop the Thunder’s mercurial offense from running all over the place and doing whatever and whatever and however they want to do it. 

“You’ve seen them over the years,” Lakers star LeBron James said. “ They have a lot of bodies, and they got a lot of guys that can do multiple things on the floor. It helps to have that depth.” 

So, Game 2 ended with the Lakers huddled around officials at midcourt to talk about how they were basically getting the short end of the refereeing stick. The Thunder made sure that there would be no such excuse the Lakers could use to explain how they would get the snot beat out of them on their own home floor in Game 3. 

After leading at the half, the Lakers were done in by a 74-point scoring blitz in the second half by the Thunder and dropped Game 3 of the series, 131-108. The Lakers are now down 0-3 in the series and are on the brink of getting swept right out of the playoffs.  

“I mean I don’t wanna say [that]. I’m not angry or disappointed,” James remarked. “Obviously, you’re disappointed. It still affects you being down 3-0, obviously. But I mean, we’ve still got life and that’s all you can ask for. I got to be much better on Monday.” 

The Thunder outscored the Lakers 33-20 in the third quarter. The OKC then rolled a 41 on the Lakers in the fourth quarter to leave no doubt who would be the victors in this contest. The third quarter proved to be monumental in determining the outcome of Game 3. 

The Thunder shot 59 percent from the field, making 13 of their 22 shots. For whatever reason, the Lakers couldn’t hold serve at Crypto.com Arena, making only 36 percent of their field goal tries ( 8 out of 22). 

OKC head coach Mark Daigneault said his ballclub forced the necessary change in the second half to win the game. 

“We were fortunate to be down by two in the first half,” Daigneault said. “I think sometimes teams look at that, and they just assume the game’s gonna turn, but we gotta understand that we have to be the ones to turn the game, and that’s what we did. We played better defense, fought on the glass, kept our pace up offensively and played obviously an exceptional second half.”   

The Thunder are so good and deep of a team that they really haven’t needed star guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander to be at his best in the last couple of games to take command of the series against the Lakers.

Gilgeous-Alexander made just 7 of 20 shots (23 points) from the field in Game 3, a sign that the Lakers’ defense is locked in and intent on slowing him down. The problem that this presents to the Lakers is that they have to stop everybody else. Los Angeles has not been successful in doing that. 

“Obviously it haven’t been my best performances,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “But I think I’ve been able to help the team win, and that’s most important. As long as we win. If the rest of the playoff run or the rest of my career looked like this, I’d be okay with it because we’ve won games. That’s all that really matters.” 

The Thunder had seven players to score in double figures in Game 3, and outscored the Lakers 64-44 in the paint. As a result of this dominance, the Lakers are just a game away from going on a very long summer vacation. To avoid that scenario, the Lakers have to buckle down and win Game 4 to extend the series. 

“We need to come and compete,” Lakers guard Austin Reaves said. “There’s a bunch of guys in this locker room that are competitors and basically the message after the game is we’re going to come in here Monday and we’re going to win. So, obviously, this situation sucks but that doesn’t give us the license to quit.”